The present invention relates to a technology for controlling a work flow management system.
A work flow management system is a technology for previously defining a flow of business comprised of a plurality of works as a process definition to support the management of work performance and business progress status based on the definition. The process definition may be regarded as modelling of a business flow. While processing in each work may be performed by a human or automatically executed by a application program, the work flow management system controls the assignment of these works to human resources, and execution of the processing by application programs, as well as manages the status and advancement of the overall business flow. The work flow management system has been developed mainly for purposes of improving the productivity of white collar and from a viewpoint of computer-based automation of procedures involved in office activities (David Hollingsworth, Workflow Management Coalition, The Workflow Reference Model, TC00-1003, January 1995, Chap. 2).
Such work flow management systems began to be utilized in relatively small scaled system configurations mainly as groupware, and have been gradually utilized more in basic businesses. Now, these systems are applied in larger scale to high throughput systems. For example, JP-A-11-213082 entitled xe2x80x9cWork Flow Management Apparatus and Work Flow Management System and Computer Readable Storage Medium Having Stored Thereon These Programsxe2x80x9d describes a method of efficiently managing a work flow in a large scaled work flow management system.
In a work flow management system, a work flow execution control engine manages the execution of a work flow in accordance with a process definition. Generally, in a work flow management system, business flows are simultaneously progressed for a plurality of process instances, so that if a large amount of process instances are simultaneously introduced, the work flow execution control engine is heavily loaded with the processing involved in the work flow execution management. On the other hand, since the number of works executable at certain time is also increased, the work flow execution control engine is required to perform scheduling for the execution of application program processing and load control if the works are processed by application programs without intervention of humans.
The above-referenced invention describes a technology for solving the problem of an increased load of work flow execution management by distributing the load of work flow execution management to a plurality of work flow execution control engines.
The prior art technology experiences difficulties in appropriately scheduling the application program processing for controlling the load in accordance of a modeled business flow since the load control and processing scheduling must be performed on a application program side independently of the process definition in consideration of the allocation of computer resources.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a work flow management method and system which consider the allocation of computer resources used by application programs which process works.
In the present invention, to solve the above problem, when a application program for processing the work must be executed, it is determined whether the number of the application programs under execution or the amount of computer resource available therefor is equal to or less than a predetermined value stored corresponding to the work which must be processed. The application program which must be executed is executed when the predetermined value is not exceeded.
In this way, it is possible to provide a work flow management method and system which consider the allocation of computer resources used by application programs for processing respective works.